Researchers, educators, and inventors have long recognized that a student learning to read and spell must master certain phonetic principles and abilities. Because English is roughly fifteen percent phonetically irregular, a student typically learns rules for pronouncing and spelling. Many methods have been used to teach pronunciation and spelling rules—one of these methods is phonics.
Traditionally, the philosophy of teaching reading and spelling can be divided into two schools. The first, known as the Fernald Method, discussed in Grace Fernald's Remedial Techniques in Basic School Subjects, published in 1943 by McGraw Hill, uses a whole word approach that emphasizes a repeated exposure to the word and the understanding of the word within a context. The teaching of phonemes occurs indirectly without a systematic approach. Hence, reader intuition and visual memory are a part of the process.
The second school of teaching reading and spelling, known as the Gillingham Method, discussed in Remedial Teaching by Anna Gillingham and Bessie W. Stillman, published by Educators Publishing Service in 1960, uses a sound blending approach of each phonetic sound.
These methods and their derivatives suffer from multiple criticisms. For example, they are criticized as exacerbating the number of inconsistencies in the English language, requiring good visual memory for success, supporting learning solely by memorization and the ability to know whether the text appears to be correct, slowing the reading process into a mechanical procedure which prevents fluidity of thought and decreasing the ability to comprehend the text, discouraging the continuity of the discovery of meaning in symbols, and compounding a student's negative feelings from the reading and writing process with the learning of all subjects. Recognizing that neither method is entirely satisfactory, researchers, educators, and inventors have sought to identify phonetic patterns, groups, or rules to reduce and simplify memorization of rules for instruction in phonemes. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,661,074, to Walker, discloses a multi-sensory systematic teaching system derived from analysis that utilizes six monosyllabic phonetic rules and colored mnemonic teaching devices. U.S. Pat. No. 5,421,731, to Walker, on the other hand, discloses utilizing polysyllabic phonemes.
Furthermore, researchers, educators, and inventors have attempted to develop methods for teaching phonetic rules. U.S. Pat. No. 4,030,211, to McGinley, discloses a set of complementary charts for teaching and testing word pronunciation and spelling. U.S. Pat. No. 4,115,932, to Charlesworth, discloses a phonetic system for teaching phonics by associating various colors with phonemes. U.S. Pat. No. 4,262,431, to Darnell, discloses a teaching device including drawers and color-coded letters to teach phonemes. U.S. Pat. No. 4,650,423, to Sprague, discloses an apparatus and method for teaching pronunciation by associating phonemes with pictures of mouth positions. U.S. Pat. No. 4,713,008, to Stocker, discloses a method for teaching a set of indicia to represent the sounds of the language without using the skill of phonemic segmentation.
Such previous systems and methods have recognized the fundamental problem of teaching phonics, namely the need to develop a systemic approach in identifying groups or classes of phonemes and teaching them effectively, however, they failed to develop a proper method for categorizing graphic representations of phonemes. Conventional phonetic systems categorize phonemes exclusively according to vowels, digraphs, and occasionally a modifying letter, such as final /e/ or internal /r/. These conventional categorized systems teach phonetic rules according to the categorization, although such teaching according to categorization may not be efficient for student learning. Conventional categorizations typically fail to include enough categories to adequately span the language, and they greatly fail to account for the interaction or influencing effect of adjoining letters or phonemes.
Susan Mortimer and Betty Smith in Comprehensive Handbook of Phonics, published by Eagles Wings in 1990, identify and disclose a method of categorizing phonemes based upon a set of criteria including:
1. The consonant following the vowel dictates the sound the vowel makes and its spelling. (The letters most affecting the vowels are /l/, /n/, /r/, /w/.)
2. Several consonants, designated as cliffs(z), and all vowels change their spelling at the end of words.
3. Silent ‘e’ helps both vowels and consonants.
4. For a rule to be valid, words that break the rule must be accounted for and limited in number.
Mortimer and Smith made two significant advances in their classification system. First, they recognized that a terminal letter or letters in a phoneme, rather than a vowel, have a stronger influence in pronunciation. Second, they recognized that adjoining letters, consonants and/or vowels, affected one another more that had been previously considered.
In following their phonetic rules, Mortimer and Smith recognized that each alphabet letter has a unique pronunciation behavior characteristic that is inherent in the character but is influenced by any adjoining characters in the phoneme. In their method, each letter could be visually represented by a fantasy character, whose environmental behavior is displayed with the fantasy character's dress and personality. For example, the letter ‘a’ is a crying baby in diapers, who says short a because he is always crying. These fantasy characters live on Alphabet Island and are mnemonic for phonetic sounds and orthographic rules.
Although Mortimer and Smith made advances, the system was inadequate for several reasons. They used only a limited set of words of the English language, and consequently omitted many words from the classification system and fantasy personalities. Also, they failed to account for phonemes with identical pronunciation but different letters (or graphic representation). Further, they failed to account for polysyllabic words and suffixes. Most importantly, they failed to develop a comprehensive strategic method for teaching the phonetic rules. Mortimer and Smith, like their predecessors, taught phonemes according to a classification, rather than some other system. Teaching by classification may not result in efficient student learning.
Therefore a need exists for a system and method for teaching reading and writing according to a comprehensive strategic method of the graphic representations of phonemes without teaching solely by classification.